Albums that start on the Vocal.....

What else should be added to this list?

Kansas: Leftoverture (Carry on Wayward Son)
Lady GaGa: The Fame Monster (Bad Romance)
Belinda Carlisle: Heaven on Earth (Heaven is a Place on Earth)
Little River Band, First Under The Wire (Lonesome Loser)
Duran Duram, Seven and The Ragged Tiger (The Reflex)
The Cars, Heartbeat City (Hello Again)
Elvis Costello, Armed Forces (Accidents will Happen)
B-52’s, Cosmic Thing (Cosmic Thing)
Queen, Jazz (Mustapha)
Beatles, Help! (Help!)
The Mana’s and The Papa’s, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (Monday, Monday)
Barenaked Ladies, Stump (One Week)
Julian Lennon, Valotte (Valotte)
Don McLean, American pie (American Pie)
Fountains of Wayne, Utopia Parkway (Utopia Parkway)

Blondie, Parallel Lines (Hanging on the Telephone)

Can also add
The Cars, Door To Door (Leave or Stay)

age of chance : 1000 years of trouble.

'there's a beautiful noise coming up from the street .. '

The LP version of “The Reflex” doesn’t start with the vocal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_mWGyEUm8

another Elvis Costello: This Year's Model (No Action)

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound (Dancing with the Moonlit Knight)
Marillion - Script for a Jester's Tear (I think they may have heard the above)

Noted on "The Reflex" !

Joni Mitchell, Dog Eat Dog (Good Friends)

Sparks, Propaganda (Propaganda) - entirely a cappella song

Cosmic Thing starts with a drum roll before the vocal.

Pat Benatar – Get Nervous (Shadows Of The Night)

Mike Oldfield, Incantations (Incantations Part One) - wordless choir

Big Thief - Two Hands (Rock and Sing)

Fugees: The Score (Red Intro)

Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session (Mining for Gold)

"You might feel left behind..."

Au Suisse s/t

NWA - Straight Outta Compton

The Shangri-Las - Leader of the Pack (Give Him a Great Big Kiss)

The Fall - Dragnet (if a call-and-response chant counts...)

Drive-By Truckers, "Decoration Day"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ52COM60JI

Smile (Our Prayer)

Einstürzende Neubauten – Halber Mensch (Halber Mensch)
Einstürzende Neubauten – Haus Der Luege (Prolog)
Einstürzende Neubauten – Tabula Rasa (Die Interimsliebenden)

Tigermilk (The State I’m In)

Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True (Welcome to the Working Week)

Each of his first three albums!

King Crimson - Three of a Perfect Pair (Three of a Perfect Pair)

The Jam - The Gift (Happy Together)

Arab Strap - Philophobia
"It was the biggest cock you'd ever seen..."

STP - Core

Cafe Tacvba - Avalancho de Exitos (Chilanga Banda)

British Sea Power’s Classic THE DECLINE of BRITISH SEA POWER starts with forty-one seconds of wordless sea-chanty harmonizing called “Men Together Today,” not sure if that is the right sense of Vocal for this thread.

Meryn Cadell - Angel Food for Thought (Secret)
Meryn Cadell - Bombazine (Jonny & Betty)

The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good (Traitor, gotta turn up the volume)

About 4 or 5 Popol Vuh albums.

Let It Be

Suzanne Vega - Solitude Standing (Tom's Diner)
Miley Cyrus - Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (Dooo It!)

Epic Soundtracks - Fallen Down (Rise Above)

In Visible Silence by Art of Noise starts with about a minute of looped vocal samples

Spacemen 3 - Recurring (Big City)

Todd Rundgren - Healing (Healer)

Todd Rundgren - Todd (How About a Little Fanfare?)

Moby - Play (Honey)

Caetano Veloso – the 1969 white album

Tigermilk (The State I’m In)

And The Boy With the Arab Strap

(The 2nd and 4th B&S longplayers also get damn close, but the feeblest of guitar strums are audible a matter of milliseconds before the voice.)

The Wedding Present, Watusi

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

vampire weekend’s contra (“horchata”) and fotb (“hold you now”) both start with sharp intakes of breath and singing shortly after

“obvious bicycle” from mvotc starts right with the vocal. I thought “mansard roof” did too, but nope, keys come in first

Madness - One Step Beyond

Neko Case 'Wild Creatures' on 'The Worse Things Get....'. Albeit by only about half a second.

Soft Cell, 'Frustration' on 'Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret'.

Each of his first three albums!

Exactly what I thought of when I saw the title. I've used it in a music quiz to a friend before.

If we can have Let It Be we can surely have

We are the Night (distorted, alas)
GodWeenSatan
Revolver
Headquarters

?

if distorted vocals count, then:

Daft Punk - Homework (Daftendirekt)

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

If we're counting vocal and music at the same time (as with the Play example) then The Wall

if spoken word counts, then:

Orbital - The Brown Album (Time Becomes)

age of chance : 1000 years of trouble.

'there's a beautiful noise coming up from the street ..

Not sure if this really counts because of the 20 seconds of noise before it but I love to see it mentioned

and on the vocal-and-music-at-the-same-time tip:

American Music Club - Engine (Big Night)

McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street opens with "No More Lonely Nights."

Spiritualized - Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (title track)

The Kinks - Sleepwalker (Life on the Road)

The Kinks - Something Else by The Kinks - (David Watts)

Carter USM - 3O Something (Surfin' U.S.M.)

Bodyswap was on TV recently but with most of Rimmer's speech removed. For shame.

The other Elvis's first album begins this way too ("Well it's-a one for the money"). So does Cliff Richard's studio debut Cliff Sings, with the same song.

Some others:
Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps - Bluejean Bop!
Little Richard - Here's Little Richard
Tommy Steele - The Duke Wore Jeans
Buddy Holly - That'll Be the Day
The Zombies - Begin Here
Little Richard - The Rill Thing
Bee Gees - 2 Years On
Elvis Presley - Elvis Now
The Beach Boys - 15 Big Ones
Paul McCartney - Flowers in the Dirt
The Divine Comedy - Fin de Siècle
Sparks - Hello Young Lovers
The Beach Boys - The Smile Sessions

age of chance : 1000 years of trouble.
'there's a beautiful noise coming up from the street ..

Not sure if this really counts because of the 20 seconds of noise before it but I love to see it mentioned

― you can see me from westbury white horse,

was wondering if i was going to get caught out.
i posted, then dug out the track and realised re the industrial noise starts before steven e appears.

Both With the Beatles and Beatles for Sale start on the vocal.

McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street opens with "No More Lonely Nights." ― The self-titled drags (Eazy)

I hate to be a pedant but the album version of "No More Lonely Nights" starts with some atmosphere and a bass riff.

I assume a capella and choral music (e.g., Gregorian chant) is disqualified?

Although, I was about to cite Enigma but it turns out that the MCMXC a.D. album started with a synthy bit. Alas.

The Holy Bible

If we're counting vocal and music at the same time

As “Help!” was listed in the OP, I assume we are…

indeed

wrens - seacaucus

I hate to be a pedant but the album version of "No More Lonely Nights" starts with some atmosphere and a bass riff.

Whoops, was assuming it started as the single version does!

Jean-Michel Jarre's Zoolook starts with a processed vocal noise. Not sure if that counts. Both Kevin Rowland's My Beauty and Propaganda's A Secret Wish start with dialogue. Probably not what the OP intended.

And of course Otomo Yoshihide's The Night Before the Death of the Sampling Virus, but that goes without saying.

Another in the speech pile: Portishead's Third

Shellac’s 1,000 Hurts, with its spoken audio calibration.

Laurie Anderson: Strange Angels (Strange Angels)

They say that heaven is like TV
A perfect little world that doesn't really need you

If we're counting vocal and music at the same time

Roxy Music, For Your Pleasure, (“Do The Strand”).

Two albums that start with vocoder:

Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Love Over and Over (Move Over Moon)
Tangerine Dream, Cyclone (Bent Cold Sidewalk)

A third:
YMO, Solid State Survivor (Technopolis)

Madonna - Music

life is peachy
all eyez on me

Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson and Clover (studio chatter category)

Lizzo - cuz I love you

Ariana Grande – both My Everything and Sweetener

life is peachy

YrJOHNNYROTTENmegaBLAPBLAPyaketyYAKroawrROAWRwhipwhipflipOOOOOOOaripplestiltskinMAAWRRRRRRRflibbityskibbitzblaptremendoogploppersWACKgrocerygroinAAAAJJJJJONGwaaaaaaaaa TWIST....TWIST........TWIST....twist

Genesis "Selling England by the Pound"

Big Black, Songs About Fucking (The Power Of Independent Trucking - "The back-")

The Beatles, With The Beatles, "It Won't Be Long"

Dunno if a count-in counts, but "Roadrunner" from the Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers debut. And also "Astral Plane" and "I'm Straight" from the same LP.

I might count that particular unusual count-in, but if all count-in’s count then Dee-Dee Ramone to thread!

Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson and Clover (studio chatter category)

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, December 27, 2022 8:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Fun fact: James was doing promo at WLS-AM in Chicago, and played a rough mix of "Crimson and Clover" for the station staff off-air. Unbeknownst to him, the station surreptitiously recorded it. On his way to that night's show, he heard the rough mix being played on WLS. Because it got so much airplay, he had to release it as-is.

Hallelujah All the Way Home by the Verlaines: "Well hello there, sordid inmates..."

Kim Deal loves to do this. Pacer by the Amps / Pod & All Nerve by the Breeders. Others Breeders albums don't count but do start really spare and get to a vocal with some urgency.

Also could've sworn Triffids' Born Sandy Devotional goes straight in with The Seabirds: "No foreign pair of dark sunglasses could ever shield you from/the light that pierces your eyelids, the screaming of the gulls."

Turns out the strings come in a fraction of a second before, but think the general idea here is a call to attention to start with, and it's too arresting not to mention.

Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
Black Box Recorder - England Made Me
The Beths - Future Me Hates Me!

The Meters - The Meters

pretty sure Tommy James story was ... Pittsburgh?

XXP: Yeah, that Triffids opener is one of most abrupt I can think of, otherwise! Like they could plausibly have already played through several such verses before we joined them. Gawd, I need to listen to it now...

Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby (Set Out Running)

The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs

pretty sure Tommy James story was ... Pittsburgh?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, December 29, 2022 1:22 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pittsburgh was where someone found "Hanky Panky," played it at a bunch of dance parties, someone else pressed thousands of (bootleg) copies, then it went to #1 (in Pittsburgh, then Chicago, then nationally).

Daniel Johnston, 1990 (entire first track is a cappella)

Keyshia Cole's sophomore album JUST LIKE YOU. The song is "Let it Go". Technically there's a quick record scratch before she sings acapella, though.

latest Costello album also starts with the vocal (Farewell, Ok)

All Saints s/t

Aphrodite's Child, 666 (The System)

Hot Chip, Freakout/Release (“Down”)

Oneida - Each One Teach One

Arab Strap - Philophobia
"It was the biggest cock you'd ever seen..."

I opened the thread specifically to see if this one had been mentioned yet.

Nicely done, ILM.

Terence Trent D'Arby - Symphony or Damn (Welcome to my monasteryo)

Jeanne Balibar - Paramour (Le tour du monde)

Charli XCX - Crash (Crash)

Gun Club Miami Jeffrey Lee vocal gets joined by rest of band.

Does a cough count cos Junkyard starts with that before Nick sings about the death of his dad on Dead Joe.

Johnny Hates Jazz’s “I Don’t Want to be a Hero” sounds very very close to Shalamar’s “I Can Make You Feel Good”

Sorry - wrong thread! Argh!

Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July

Badfinger "Ass" ("Apple of My Eye")

American Life

Songs About Fucking

Medúlla by Björk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:A_cappella_albums

Frazier Chorus - Sue

Big Audio Dynamite II: The Globe (Rush)